Spacious

As I sit to write this I am aware that many do not believe that Jesus has anything to do with this season, much less that he is God and Lord over all. Being PC can be unnerving when there is precious little room for anything more than opinions, which after all are only yours and certainly not to be brought into question.

So Merry Christ-mas to you.

My fervent prayer for this coming year is that your life will be “spacious.”

This comes from a quote: “The leadership mind is spacious.” This quote was found in an article by Peter Koestenbaum in Fast Company a number of years ago. He goes on to say that you cannot get around life’s inherent contradictions. This mind he is speaking of has “ample room for ambiguities of the world, for conflicting feelings, and for contradictory ideas.”

I wondered as I read this if this is not what Jesus is offering us, as His followers, a product of his coming to earth. He is giving us a major way in which to navigate this truly crazy world, politically, economically, and relationally with a spacious mind at rest, calm, tranquil and still. So many people, so many ideas, so much pain, such mixed responses. The cacophonous voices afraid or angry, I wonder how many of these agents come from a cramped space where there is no room in which to reflect and where there is no one at ease.

In Isaiah 28:16 “Therefore thus says the Lord God, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.” [or will not be in a hurry] my translation is: will have the space to live regardless the context.

How often today do you find yourself “disturbed?” Maybe a spaciousmind, a mind the bible would say is at rest, is what we will need to truly live in a troubled and disturbing world.

We live with such polarities. Yet most of the substance of life comes from those elements that really have no solutions–but rather demand a change of attitude or renewing the way you perceive. In the face of such complexity without solutions, most people either give up or try harder. Maybe the bible and Koestebaum are both suggestion the same thing that there is indeed another way, that of rest, of not being disturbed, or having enough room to see and understand that there is a peace available in the midst of conflict.

Again in Isaiah 8:11-14a, “For thus the Lord spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, You are not to say, ‘It is a conspiracy!’ In regard to all that this people call a conspiracy, And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy. and He shall be your fear; And He shall be your dread. Then He shall become a sanctuary,…”

In your situation there is no conspiracy or fear that can stand up against a person who is at rest, has space in their thinking to enter the relational sanctuary that Isaiah is speaking about. He/God becomes our place of rest. The relationship with the Holy offers us just such space.

That is why Jesus came.

Koestebaum goes on to say when you grapple with these complexities with spaciousness then you; “lose your arrogant, self-indulgent illusions,” and you realize that having space or rest frees you to truly live. I pray you will make room for the gift of rest that is offered and the great joy that spaciousness can bring in the middle of great puzzlement and complexity.

Here is to a quiet, calm 2016 where we enter His rest and create spacefor living.